


Three Fingers Left On This Hand

by livii



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Community: apocalyptothon, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2008-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:53:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livii/pseuds/livii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They put up the fence during Week Two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Fingers Left On This Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soundingsea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundingsea/gifts).



> For soundingsea in Apocalyptothon 2008, who requested: Before Judgement Day can hit, a pandemic does. Cameron's immune, but can she save them all? Cameron/Sarah and/or Cameron/John a plus, but I'm not OTP about this fandom. Gen is cool too. I'm pretty much good with anything except Cameron being against the humans.  
> 
> Thanks to carawj for beta reading! A bit of the sustainable agriculture prompt worked its way in here as well. Title is a lyric from a song by Jenny Owen Youngs.

She cocks her gun, staring off into the distance. From far away comes a howling.

Three echoing shots ring out: bang – bang – bang.

When the sound fades away, all is quiet again. Cameron sits back, waits.

She has a lot of waiting to do yet.

 

*

 

They put up the fence during Week Two. Tight-linked metal, topped with barbed wire: nothing getting in.

Or out.

 

*

 

Derek is the first to die.

He was never well, not really, after he was shot. When he starts coughing, John worries, and they call Charley to take a look.

Fluid buildup in the lungs, Charley says, prescribing antibiotics and trying to avoid awkward questions about the way Derek's skin was turning pale white, flaking away in the wind.

It had been quick, at least, Cameron says later: only a week, from first cough to grave.

No one mentions what the week entailed.

 

*

 

Mass panic in Dublin; Quarantine in Beijing; Rioting in Los Angeles.

Infection rate is 100%. Mortality rate is 100%. Burn the bodies. Salt the earth. Run for the hills. Damnit, run for your fucking lives.

And then, the news stops.

 

*

 

Cameron's sitting on the car: watching, watching, watching. John finds his mother slumped beside it, eyes staring off into the distance, seeing civilization crash and burn over and over again.

"Judgment Day," she says, putting her face in her hands. "They never fucking said it would be like this."

John looks at Cameron, but she shrugs, continues staring off into the distance. While he's looking at her, his mother coughs, once.

"Something in my throat," she says, standing up carefully. John grabs her, hugs her tight.

"We've still got each other," he says. "Just like always."

Cameron looks away.

 

*

 

Derek is the first to die.

On the third day, he slides into permanent delirium: his body temperature off the charts. He starts screaming – nonsense, really. Just nonsense.

On the fourth day, he tries to bite anyone who comes near him.

On the fifth day, he starts gnawing his own hands off.

 

*

 

"You eat," John says, sweat trickling down his forehead, his breath coming in sharp, short bursts. "You eat and drink and you..."

"Fornicate?" Cameron replies. She tilts her head, angles her knees up a little higher.

"Fuck." He goes red as he says it, then shudders, and comes inside her. Cameron wrinkles her nose prettily.

"That didn't seem very efficient." She pushes him to the side, and sits up. He stares up at her, still trying to catch his breath.

"You eat and drink and fuck," he says again, "but you don't die."

She wrinkles her nose again; an annoying mannerism she doesn't seem to realize she's developed. "Why would I want to die?" she asks, finally. "Do you want to die?"

John sits up, looks out the window. From outside the fence, a man waves to him, a ragged pile of walking bones, munching on one of the dead bodies piled up like so many fallen leaves.

"Maybe," he says. "Yeah."

Cameron nods. "There's no future left to save. You're the last of your kind."

"So are you," he says quietly, tracing his fingers along her arm. She shrugs, hops off the bed, and goes to retrieve her gun.

"I eat and drink and fuck," she repeats, "and I fight." She takes aim, and puts two neat holes through the man outside's head; one wasted, but these days, it's better to be sure.

 

*

 

Just before the fence goes up, they make a daring expedition to town for supplies. Cameron crouches on the roof with a rifle while Sarah drives, dodging bodies in varying states of decay. They raid the shelves to augment what Sarah had already kept in reserve. Cameron's the one who spots the seeds; she gets bitten for her trouble in picking them all up, but the man gets a mouthful of steel for his trouble.

Back at the house, John's inexpertly welding barbed wire onto the fence, sitting beside Derek's fresh grave. Cameron crouches beside him, carefully poking a hole in the earth.

"Don't do that there," John snaps, grabbing the little bag from her hand. "You're going to grow – cucumbers?" He stares at Cameron.

She shrugs. "It's food."

"And the ground could be infected. Play with your vegetables somewhere else."

Sarah comes over and watches while Cameron plants all her seeds: cucumbers, radishes, carrots, bell peppers.

"They won't grow," Sarah says, when Cameron finishes.

"Maybe." Cameron stands up, dusts off her hands and knees. "We have to try."

Sarah nods, her lips a tight, thin line. "For the future."

Cameron nods back. "For John."

 

*

 

Right before the phones go dead, Agent Ellison calls.

"Just tell me how she is," he says, wheezing as he speaks. Sarah begs him to come out to the house, but he refuses.

"Just tell me she won't be the last living creature left on God's green Earth," he says.

Sarah looks up; Cameron is standing by the window, as perfect as always.

"At least they didn't wipe us out," Sarah says.

Ellison coughs wetly. "Yeah." He hangs up.

 

*

 

"You're a miracle," Sarah says, stroking John's hair fondly. She can't get up, but John sits with her.

He rolls his eyes. "Mom."

"You sent your own father back in time," she continues, ignoring his protest. "You created yourself." She frowns. "Was this always meant to happen, then?"

John takes her hand. "We've always been trying to save the world, Mom. We did all we could."

When Sarah's asleep, he leaves; he stands outside her room, staring off into the distance. Cameron comes over.

"Is it all my fault, then?" he asks her, kicking the ground with the heel of his foot.

"Maybe," she says, cold and clinical as always.

He gets angry. Really angry.

So he kisses her.

 

*

 

On the sixth day, they've tied Derek down in the garage, while he foams at the mouth. The last of his skin is hanging off his body in bloody strips, and he's skinny as a rail.

Cameron stands guard. Her gun is loaded.

"You just going to shoot him?" John asks, pale and drawn. "You're going to kill my uncle?"

Cameron shakes her head. "I'm going to keep you safe."

 

*

 

Derek dies a moment after dawn; Cameron's gun stays loaded and unfired.

 

*

 

She saves the bullets for Sarah's desperate cries: the last selfless act of a mother who has always, always done everything she could for her child.

John coughs as Sarah's brains drip gently onto the floor.

 

*

 

She's pretty sure the world is for animals only now; more data needed, she thinks. Hard to calculate. She takes the other Terminator's chip out of her pocket, twirls it around in her hand, contemplating. Then she drops it in the dirt, and grinds it to dust with her heel.

She sits; she waits, gun at the ready. This is the last protection she can offer, she thinks, as around the three homemade gravestones the pale green tendrils of a cucumber plant stretch out towards the clear blue sky.


End file.
